Together: How is Your Sh���Phelah?

Hi, Southeast family, how are you all? So glad to have you here this morning. Thank you for joining us online. We are going to jump into our series here, but before we do that, I do need to drop one little bee in your bonnet. Boop. We are looking ahead at reopening kids' ministry. For all the parents in the room, they're the ones that clapped for this --we've been, I've been sitting with my kids for weeks. I haven't heard a word. You said. Listen, I get it. And I am so thankful for the fact that you guys continue to come. The most important thing is that we want to keep everybody safe, right? Like that's the most important thing. And so, we are working on that. I believe this is subject to change. But I believe Sunday, September the 20th will be our target date to reopen. Then that'll give us time to get everything in place, get our volunteers trained on what it looks like to do this in this new world and do all that stuff. So, it's still a few weeks out, but I think September 20th is going to be that Sunday. So I just want to let you know that. Yeah, it'll be exciting as we take one step closer to normal.

I want to open the sermon this morning just with review. So, we've been in a series called Together. And week one, we talked about how we're better together. We're just better together. This is what the Bible teaches us over and over again, we're better together. And last week we talked about how our hurt gets in the way of us being willing to connect--to be together.  So, we’ve got to deal with our hurts. And so, we had a really good Bible therapy session and we all went home, and I don't know what you guys did -- my family, all week was like, no, I'm going to have to deal with that hurt. So, it was fun.

So, this week and next week, what I want to do is talk about why community is so important from a couple of different angles and morning this morning, I want to just talk about the life of Sampson and what we can learn in regard to community. And so, we're going to do that, but before we get there, I want to show you pictures. So, let's throw this map up. This is a map of Israel, the promised land, still today. It's still true. Cause geography doesn't change. If you think about Israel and geography, this will help you to remember. I want you to think about it like a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich. And that's really funny to think about Israel and bacon. Like, you’ll always remember this now.  So, Galilee is the top bun and then there's these five strips of bacon. These regions of land, the coastal Plains, Sh’phelah, Judah Mountains , Judah Wilderness and the Rift Valley. And then below that is the lettuce, the tomato and the bottom button, which are three deserts –Negeve, Sien and Paran. So that's how you can fit geographically. And why that matters is because where we're at in the bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich says a lot about the kind of story that we're going to encounter, biblically. Okay. So, here's the thing. When God's people came into the promised land, all of this was all divided up amongst the tribes, but the coastal Plains were never dispersed. They never got settled by God's people. The coastal plain is where all the pagan nations lived and it's actually, the coastal plain is what makes this part of the world such an important part of the world, historically. Because it's 60 miles long and 10 miles wide -- the coastal plain --
and it literally controls the entire trade route from Babylon to Egypt because it's this choke point that everybody has to go through-- this turnstile that everybody has to go through. So, whoever controls that piece of ground can tax anybody who comes through it and taxes make me rich. And so this becomes a really critical -- this why Israel still fought over, um, and the ancient world, like everybody wants it because of that tiny little strip of land called the coastal plain. In the time of the Bible, all the pagan nations, they lived there, the Canaanites, the Jebusites, the vegimites, the Philistines all live in the coastal plain. God's people settled in the Judah mountains up in the mountains, up high – there, they're safe, they're protected. And they settled. Jerusalem is on top of the ridge line the Judah mountains. So it's up to that's where they settled. And so between the coastal plain and the Judah mountains, there's this strip of land called Sh’Phelah -- means low Hills. It's kind of the, as you come out of the coastal plain, where it starts to get rocky before it jets up into the mountain range. Sh’Phelah is this region between the coastal Plains and the Judah mountains. Now, if all the pagan nations live in the coastal plain and God's people are living in the Judah mountains, what stories might you think would emerge out of Sh’Phelah? This is where God's people meet the pagan nations. And so all, with the exception of, I think one or two, all of the Philistine battles happen in Sh’Phelah. All of them. This is where we engage the rest of the world.

And so in the rabbinic world, there was this tradition that this question that emerged where they would ask this, how is your, Sh’Phelah? What they meant by asking that is, how are you doing at engaging the pagan nations? How are you doing it, putting your God on display to the world? How are you doing that? How is your Sh’Phelah? And what they came up with is that there's three options for how we engage. And each one had a biblical character that, um, that they would kind of model themselves after now, option one on how we engage the pagan nations is Noah. Okay. Here's Genesis 6:9. Here's what it says. These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God. That's awesome. I hope that when I die, a long time from now, I hope that is able to be written on my tombstone, right? Like I would love that. He was a righteous man, blameless in his generation and he walked with God. There’s nothing wrong with that. But the rabbis call him the man with the fur coat. And here's why -- when it's cold outside, you have two options: number one, you can build a fire and warm everyone around you. Or, you can put on a coat and just keep yourself warm. In the 120 years that Noah was building the ark, he never one time that we see in the Bible, he never one time told anybody what was happening. Noah isolated himself from, and this is one way that we can engage culture, we can isolate. And Christians are really good at it. We have our own entire Christian subculture. We have Christian radio and Christian songs and Christian TV and Christian books and Christian clothing lines and Christian there's Christian, everything. It's all, there's Christian, everything. So, we can, if we choose to, we can completely isolate. Now, before we go, that's not the right answer. Well, there is a place. I mean, Noah was blameless. He was righteous right? He walked with God. Furthermore, Jesus tells us that when we face persecution to run. So it's not like he's out of bounds. The question is, is that really always the best option? And I would suggest that maybe the answer to that is no, not all the time.

Second character, biblical character that they give us is Lot. In the book of Genesis chapter 19. What we see is that lot is sitting in the city Gates at Sodom. What that means is Lot is on the city council at Saddam and what is he doing to defend the debauchery going on in Sodom? Nothing. He assimilates. Here's what Genesis 19 says, Two angels came to Sodom in the evening and Lot was sitting in the gate at Sodom. That statement sitting in the gate is huge. That's a huge statement. When lot saw them, he rose to meet them and bowed himself with his face to the earth. Lot doesn't seem to look very much different than the world. And so he doesn't seem to have a whole lot to offer. And what's interesting is, a lot of us as Christians wrestle with this question, how much can I get away with and still be a Christian? And the problem with living in that kind of a mindset is that we don't really have anything distinct to offer the world. Like they're like, why would we want to become a Christian? We, you look just like us. Like your life is the same. You spend your money the same, you live your life the same, your vocabulary is the same, you watch the same things on TV, you spend your energy and time looking just like the world. Why would we want that? We already have it. And it doesn't cost us 10% of our income, right? But is the answer to isolate? Like this, there's this spectrum, right? This isolate-assimilate spectrum, that we're the pendulum swings back and forth.

And so the third character that we see that they use that the rabbis taught about was Abraham. And of course, it's Abraham Genesis 18. What we see as something really, really interesting with Abraham, it says he lifted up his eyes up and looked, and behold, three men were standing in front of him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent door. And when you look at that statement, ‘he ran from the tent door’, you should be like, no way. It is humiliating for old men to run in that culture. They never run -- to expose your knees is horrible in their culture. It's, it's disgraceful. It's immodest. You would never see an old, certainly not an old man, but that's got the wealth and the kind of the influence and the power that Abraham seems to have in the world that he's living in. And he gets up from the tent door and runs and bows himself to the earth and says, O Lord, if I have found favor in your sight, do not pass by your servant. He says this to three strangers that he does not know. And then he has his wife make bread for them with three se’ahs of their finest flour. And we all go, whoa, not three se’ahs, right? Experts debate about exactly how much flour that is. But the range is between 55 and 70 pounds of flour. How long is it going to take her to make that much bread -- for three people that he does not know? He's not just setting them up for a meal, he's taking care of their whole journey. It’s going to turn out that this is God and two angels, but Abraham doesn't know that at the time. See, Abraham engages the culture and yet remains distinct. Like why, when you read that story and realize what they're actually doing and why the world would you do that Abraham? Also you go, hmm, it makes sense that God would use a guy like that. Like Abraham is this beautiful tension of isolation and assimilation, kind of this middling of engagement where we live in this, like, how do we engage? How do we do it, well? When do we pull away? When do we step in? This is a tension and it's fluid. And because of that, what I'm going to tell you very clearly is if you try to figure this out without a spiritual community around you, you will not figure it out well, We must have Christian brothers and sisters that will help us to understand what it means to engage, but be distinct. That's our mission as residents in the kingdom of God -- to engage, but still remain distinct. And it's the tension that we live in. Now, I'm not going to resolve that tension for you today. Hopefully I'm going to make it a lot worse because we need to understand the weight of what it means to carry the name Christian into the world that we live in. It's important.

Now we're gonna talk about Sampson this morning and we'll, we'll tell his story, but before we do that, Sampson is a Nazarite. So I want to, I want to talk a little bit about what it means to be a Nazarite and then we'll impose that on top of Sampson’s story and see kind of what's going on there. Numbers 6, and I know you've all poured over the book of Numbers. It's one of the most popular books in the whole Bible, right up there with Leviticus and Lamentations. We all read those on the daily, but Numbers 6, it says, and the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ‘speak to the people of Israel and say to them, when either a man or a woman makes a special vow -- so you can be a male or a female and be a Nazarite -- the vow of a Nazarite, to separate himself to the Lord,  he shall separate himself from wine and strong drink. He shall drink no vinegar made from wine or strong drink and shall not drink any juice of grapes or eat grapes, fresh or dried. All the days of his separation he shall eat nothing that is produced by the grapevine, not even the seeds or the skins. So this isn't just alcohol. A lot of people go, the Nazarite vow’s about no alcohol. Well, it's not just no alcohol, not for the Nazarite. It's nothing attached to the grape, nothing. Which, in that world is the equivalent of eating a fast food cheeseburger, like, it's a staple in their diet. The grape is a staple in their diet. And so for the Nazarite to pull away from that is massive because it has all kinds of uses and implications in their diet beyond just going and getting a bunch of grapes and eating the grapes themselves. All the days of his vow of separation, no razor shall touch his head. Until the time is completed for which he separates himself to the Lord, he shall be holy. He shall let the locks of hair of his head grow long. (I read this passage to my dad when I was in high school. Dad, it's holy to have long hair -- and I had a mullet for days. Let me say this, it may be holy to have long hair, but I don't think it's ever holy to have a mullet. Let's just, let's just be honest. Now I'm just happy to have a little bit of hair left.) All the days that he separates himself to the Lord he shall not go near a dead body. Okay? So three things, never to touch the grape, has to let his hair grow and he shall not go near anything dead. Here's what it says. Not even for his father or his mother for brother or sister, if they die, shall he make himself unclean, because his separation to God is on his head. So listen, if you're in a Nazarite vow, even if your mom or dad or your brother or sister die, you can't go near them all the days of his separation, he is Holy to the Lord. Now, this is the Nazarite amongst a group of people who are supposed to be separate from the world, distinct from the world in the way that they put their God on display. The Nazarite is distinct even amongst those people. The Nazarite sets themselves

apart, even amongst a group of people that are set apart. Does that make sense? They're like an example to the people of what the people are supposed to be to the world. And so they have these things that they don't do. Things that are not necessarily wrong. It's just things that for them, they don't do because it creates a conversation about their God and what they're doing.

So in Judges 13, we're introduced to Sampson and it says this. There was a certain man of Zorah, of the tribe of the Danites. (By the way, if you come with me to Israel, we will actually go right where the story happens. Right where the story of Sampson happens. We know the square inch where it happened.) …whose name was Manoah. And his wife was barren and had no children. And the angel of the Lord appeared to the woman and said to her, behold, you are barren and have not borne children -- don't think the angel had to say that, but he did,-- but you shall conceive and bear a son. Therefore, be careful and drink no wine or strong drink, and eat nothing unclean, for behold, you shall conceive and bear a son. No razor shall come upon his head, for the child shall be a Nazarite to God from the womb, and he shall begin to save Israel from the hand of the Philistines. And so Sampson is born. From the time of his birth, he's born a Nazarite he's -- with the exception of maybe John the Baptist -- he's the only one that ever gets this distinction of being from the womb a Nazarite. Okay. And so, he's born with all of this power, all of this strength, and it kind of starts to get at him. And there's two kind of major issues in the life of Sampson that are really important. Because as a judge, it's a little bit different than what we understand judges today in our world. In our world, the judge is the one who pronounces punishment, right? So they dropped the gavel. The judge is like, you will get 30 days of community service, or you will go to jail or, you know. Whatever the punishment is, the judge is the one that pronounces the judgment in their world. God is the one who pronounces judgment. The judge is the one who leads the people in carrying it out. So the judge is at the front of the line. If the judgment is war, then the judge is going to lead the challenge to war. If the judgment is repentance, then the judge is going to make sure that people are repenting. He's the one who carries out the punishment. He's the one that makes sure that it's being exacted. And so Sampson is made by God from the womb, with this lot of strength so that he can lead the people to freedom. That's what he's there for.  And Sampson kind of loses the plot.

And what happens is there's two things that are true about Sampson’s story that we see. The first one starts with this. There is a  Jewish belief that goes like this Midda K’negged Midda -- what it means is measure corresponding to measure, or the measure with which you sin is the measure with which you will have to experience the ramifications of that sin. Let me give you an example of how it works. Any time in Sampson's story that you see him blow it, he does something bad. Now, he doesn't always do bad things. Sometimes he does good things, but when he's, when  we're starting a section of his story where he's about to blow it, it always opens with the same phrase – “and he saw”, and he saw the Phlistine woman and he went into her and he went home and told his mom and dad to get her for him. And they said, isn't there a woman amongst us that you, and he said, no, this is the one I want. And he saw, and he saw, and he saw, and he saw the jaw bone of a donkey. And he saw-- like over and over and over again, when, he's going to blow it, it always begins with the same thing. And he saw. Sampson's problem is his eyes.  What does he lose? He loses his eyes – Midda K’negged Midda. And once his eyes are gone, now, he's useful. Not because his eyes are, but because he can't fix his eyes on the wrong things anymore. Does that make sense? Now? What if, because here's the other thing that we see, that's the problem with Samson. He doesn't have any friends. There's no one ever with him. What is Sampson had a group of guys that loved him and loved the Lord enough to say, Sampson, you're wrong here. You're wrong here. Knock it off. I gotta tell you. So my wife and I we've been married 26 years, which is a long time I've been with her longer than I was without her. Right? Which is a weird piece of math. But we, I met her when I was 18 and we dated, and we got married when I was 20. And so you're like doing the math. I'm 46. My wife is still 29, just so you know. It's weird how that worked out. But I've been with her a long time. And here's the thing about marriage. There are days that you wouldn't trade your wife for the world, or your husband, and then there's days where you trade them for a diet Coke, right? Like we know in a marriage relationship, there's, there's both, there's both. And sometimes it's seasons where you're going through, and you're just like -- today where my marriage is out with my wife I can say, I am super thankful that we are together. And I love her so much. And, uh, just watching all this cool things that the Lord is doing in her life. I just, I just love being her partner in so many, at so many levels. Cause she's just cool. I have not always felt that way. She has not always felt that way about me. And what I can tell you for sure is, the thing that has kept us together in those lean times is that we had people around us that refuse to let us give up. Like I had a group of guys that was like, Aaron, you're being dumb. You're wrong. You need to go back and love your wife the way that Christ loved the church. Like the call back to what the Bible says a relationship should be -- like the relationships get in trouble when we try to make it our own thing. Just do what the Bible says. It's weird how relationship works. It works when we just do it God's way, but I wouldn't even be married to her today. If it wasn't for those people that rallied around us and said, no, you won't, you won't quit. And it's one of the reasons why Satan tries so hard when we're in the middle of a sin mess, like we're struggling with, he tries so hard to keep us isolated, because if you're rallying around a group of people, they're going to help you get through it well. And it will define you and it will become part of your story. And because of that, my wife and I have modeled for our kids. Like, it's not just, it's not just my wife and I stay in married, surviving marriage, but you know, there's a lot of people like we were talking about this a couple of weeks ago, my wife's like in my parents' generation, they didn't believe in talking about their problems. So, but they also didn't believe in divorce so they didn't get divorced, but they slept in different bedrooms. You know, they're in the same home, but you would hardly call it a marriage, right? Like that's, that's how they chose to deal with it. That's how they chose to deal with it. And um, for us, we didn't, we really, neither one of us wanted that kind of a relationship. And so we, we pressed in, but because of those people that surrounded us, we stayed together. And because of that, we're changing the legacy of how our kids choose their spouse. Like it's not that having a community to understand the tension of how we engage the world, but remain distinct. It's not just making my life better. It's changing generationally what happens in my family line. So important for us to recognize that. Like Sampson never has people around him. And so there's nobody ever there to focus his eyes on the right things and tell him to stop looking at the wrong things. And so, because of that, God's faithful. God is faithful. Whether we have friends or not, right? So he loses his eyes and then he's useful. And then his hair grows back. He gets stronger again. And he pulls a building down on top of him. Now remember, what was Sampson's purpose? His purpose was to be a judge to begin the deliverance of God's people from the Philistines. And when he pulled the building down, he killed every major military official in the Philistine army all at once. Here's why -- Sampson tried to do it, his own self, like a lot. He tried to do it, his own self a lot. He killed a thousand Philistine soldiers with the jaw bone of a donkey, which by the way, I don't even know where you stack that many bodies. Like what? That's crazy. It's crazy. But because he was doing it on his own accord, under his own power, with his own agenda, doing it his own way, it was a mess. And it actually incited more violence. It incited Sampson's own people to turn against him. When Sampson let himself be God's man, all of a sudden minimum damage, maximum impact, because that's what God does. And I promise you this, if you can figure out how to engage culture well, God will do more in 60 seconds with you than you could do in 60 years because that's who he is. And that's one of the ways that we know that we're in that pocket of engaged, but distinct. Engaged but distinct. And sometimes that means isolation. Like, no, I will not participate in that, whatever that is, I will not go there. Right. Sometimes it means we, this is a dangerous statement, but it's true. Sometimes it's not all the time. Sometimes you got to get so close to the fire that you smell like smoke. The people when you're, when you're going into the, into the fire to pull people out. Sometimes you get wrongly associated. Sometimes isolate. But in that pocket, we got to have a community of people around us to help us figure out what it means to engage, but remain distinct, engaged, but remain distinct because that is our mission.

So what does that look like? What does that look like? Well, it looks like this 1 Peter 2. Here's what it says. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable. Okay. So let's stop and talk about that statement. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, uh, when you're cut off in traffic and you want to raise the one finger salute -- think about a car, is that it feels like you're self contained, like you're kind of in your own little bubble and no one sees you, but people can see you from all four directions, right? Like remember that the next time you're singing to the radio ad, stoplight people see you. People can see you do that stuff. Even if you're like, no, I'm in my own little bubble, doesn’t matter? I can really let them have it. And all those words of joy -- whatever is true, whatever is praiseworthy. Or, if you're at the football game or the basketball game or the hockey game or the whatever game baseball, whenever that stuff reopens. The good news is none of you have done this this year. Like I know, but the ref makes a bad call and it just becomes an internal compulsion to like tell them how bad that call was, loudly, in front of the whole stadium of people. Like we need to let them know. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable. It's not honorable, spouses. It's not honorable to run your spouse down in public. It's not honorable to run your spouse down, but it's especially not honorable to run your spouse down in public. It's not honorable. It's not honorable to gossip and talk negatively about people without talking to them. It's not honorable, like keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable so that when they speak against you as evildoers, not, if they speak, when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of his visitation. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable so that when they accuse you of being evildoers, that they may see your good deeds, the life that you live and glorify God on the day of his visitation. That's what it starts to look like. Now that, but specifically like concrete, what does that look like? That's why you need a community because you're going to be put in spaces where you don't know, you don't know what that looks like in a specific situation. So you need people around you to help you process that. 

So I have some questions for us to ask this week in our life group. And if you're not in a life group, I'd really encourage you to get in one. Cause this is where you can begin to develop those relationships to help you process how we remain engaged, but distinct -- engaged, but distinct. We cannot impact our culture, number one, if we don't remain distinct, where's the line between remaining distinct and running away? Where does that line? Because here's the deal. There's a whole lot of people that lean into that isolation side that are running away. Like they're like, that's a tension and I don't want to be in tension. And so I'm just not even going to engage it. I'm just to stay over here with them, with my people who agree with me and think like me and act like me and we're going to be, we're going to be distinct. Yeah. But you're not engaged.  And that’s a problem because the mission is to engage the world. That's why, um, you know, we, we have all these issues going on in our culture right now, and the church has got to figure out how to engage those. We've got to figure out how to engage it. Like we don't get to just sit in our little holy huddle and be separate. Well, I don't want to do that. Cause that's complex. It is complex. It's hard, it's difficult. And we got to go into it with a lot of grace and a lot of compassion, all of it. But we don't get to sit and isolate. We've got to figure out ways to engage because that's the mission. That's the mission. 

Number two, we cannot impact our culture if we disengage. What does disengaging look like?

Number three. What do followers of Jesus have to offer our culture that it doesn't already possess? This is a great question, actually, because we live in a culture, in this area, where it feels like people kind of have what they want in life and they don't need a whole lot from anybody else. And so why do they need Jesus? Why do they need Jesus? Well, I can tell you two things that no matter what you're doing in the world, the world cannot give you: number one is purpose. You cannot get purpose from the world. Number two is genuine connection. You cannot have genuine connection outside of the Holy Spirit working in your life. So we're going to invite people into a bigger mission, but we also need to invite them into a spiritually based relationship. One that actually leads us to genuine biblical connection. 

Number four, on our own, we cannot balance the tension between impacting our culture and remaining. On our own, it's too easy to compromise. It's too easy. It's too easy because we'll compromise accidentally and not even know it. And here's why, because my decisions are slanted by my own perspective. In a community, my decisions are rounded out by the people around me. So here's the question. What should we do when we have questions about how to respond to what's going on around us. And by the way, there's a lot of questions about how to respond. What's going on around us, right now, right? There's a lot of questions about it. Where do we go? We go to the harbinger of all things good and true – Facebook? I'm going to take to Facebook and have a smear campaign -- stand for truth. I'm like, where do we go? Where do we go? When we have questions, which we all have questions, where do we go when we have these questions? I would say our biblical call is to rally around us a community of people that can help us with sound godly, biblical advice. Not pop psychology, but sound, godly, biblical advice on how to engage, but remain distinct. Engage, but remain distinct. That tension is our mission and we’ve got to live in it well.

I love moving into our communion time on the heels of that. We have, we take communion every week and, if you're new with us, we have an open table. What that means is, anybody who calls himself a Christian that has made Jesus the Lord of their life is invited to partake with us, but we want you to hold those elements til the end and we take it all together. Here's what I think about when I think about the picture of communion of Jesus laying his life down the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus is such a good picture for us and how we navigate this whole experience, well. The engaging, but distinct. Like we don't, we don't get to stay distinct, well, by pushing our own agenda. We get there by laying our lives down at the foot of the cross and letting God be the one to call the shots, let him move in our lives. Let him direct us, let him navigate the directions because then everywhere we go, there he is. And we don't have to, we don't have to work on our own power. God will do more with our lives in just a little bit of time. If we'll just let him have it. If we'll just let him have it. Where in your life are you just kinda not laying it down? Like this is my life, I want to do it my way. And as we consider communion, what would Jesus want you to do in response to that? Let's take a minute to think about that.

On the night Jesus was betrayed, he took bread and he broke it. And he said, this is my body, which is broken for you, given for you. Whenever you eat this bread, do it remembrance of me. And then after the dinner he took a cup and he said, this cup is the blood of the covenant, which is shed for you. So whenever you drink this cup, do it in remembrance of me. 

Let's pray. God, thank you so much for this mission that we have to go out and engage the world in a way that accurately represents who you are. And God, I sure appreciate your grace. As we stumble along, trying to figure it out. Lord rally around us, people so that we can engage, but remain distinct well. Lord help us to show the world who you are for real. And Lord, thank you for your grace. When we sail in your name, amen. Let’s stand and sing one more song.

So every week I pray for you the same thing, and I will continue to do this, that you would have the courage to care enough about the mission that God has called us to that this isn't about personal preferences or ideals. This is about God and his mission and his kingdom, his way, his time, it's all about him. That we would have the courage to live into that truth by laying our lives down in a way that he can use it, that we would be able to find that tension between engaging, but being distinct. May you have the courage to live into that well.